Negotiations between the county and one landlord to develop a music hall in downtown Silver Spring are close to wrapping, MoCo exec Ike Leggett declared.
Expect an official announcement in about six weeks, Leggett told The Penguin last Saturday at ye olde library’s book fest. Exactly what would be announced was unclear.
Photo: Nothing to see here. Move along. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP.
It’s been a long-ass road to bring the project to someone’s concept of fruition. Concert promoter Live Nation inked a deal with the county in January 2008 to rent out the venue, which will sit behind the Art Deco facade of a former JC Penney department store on Colesville Road. At the time, county officials predicted the $8 million music hall would be open by 2010.
But the Lee Development Group, which owns the land and is offering it as required public-use space for a larger adjacent development, wants all assurances that the project next door won’t be screwed by the music hall’s construction, Leggett explained in May.
“Everyone’s super-lawyered up,” he said at the time.
And about that adjacent project: There are no final plans for it yet. However, the Lee Development Group hinted at a 7-story, 215,000 square-foot office building on Georgia Avenue, plus a 14-story, 139,000 square-foot hotel behind the music hall on Fenton Street, the Washington Business Journal reported in August.
Image: The music hall's potential neighbor. Courtesy of Hickok Cole/LDG.
The music hall itself will contain 33,000 square-feet of hard-rocking, head-banging awesomeness, or enough room for up to 2,000 people.
“We’re not asking for additional density, we’re not asking for money,” Bruce Lee, company president, told the Washington Examiner that same month. “We’re not asking for anything outside the box.”
So what’s the holdup?
Leggett was tight lipped last Saturday and said he wouldn’t go into details about the negotiations. In an email Wednesday to The Penguin, Lee said only that he agreed with the county exec’s prediction that an announcement would be made soon.
The county’s lease with Live Nation allows for 30 days’ wiggle room if a third party (read: the county planning board) gets in the way of the venue’s construction. Up to nine more months can be added to complete the music hall if both parties agree to it.
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“Super-Lawyered Up” would be a good band name and I think they should be Fillmore SS’s first act to play there.
“Everyone’s super-lawyered up”
Can we make this the County motto? Can anyone translate the phrase into Latin?
Giving the developers the the ok to build a project in which nobody knows what that project is going to be is just a bad idea.
Sounds like the foxes are guarding the hen house.
Providing a subsidy for Live Nation was bad enough before they proposed merging with Ticketmaster. Why, again, are we doing that? Does anyone who lives in Silver Spring want this deal?
This is turning ironic. Back when the Birchmere deal fell through and Fillmore was announced as the new venue, some of the younger letter writers mocked middle-aged old poops like me, who generally favored the acts that play at the Birchmere over the new acts that would play at the Fillmore (what is this “electric guitar” of which you speak?).
But with the way things are going, by the time the Fillmore actually opens up, those younger letter writers will probably be middle-aged old poops yearning for a place like the Birchmere where they can still see their favorite bands from the 1990’s and 2000’s. And they, of course, will be mocked by the new letter writers who are fans of the neo-polka genre of the 2020’s.